【正文】 to visitors. Many changes in destination attractions are not planned, and in northern Europe the decline in popularity of traditional seaside resorts since the 1960s has been largely the result of changes in the accessibility of peting destinations in the sunnier south of the Continent. Changes in the product ponents often occur in spite of, and not because of, the wishes of governments and destination planners. They occur because travel and tourism, especially at the international level, is a relatively free market, with customers able to pursue new attractions as they bee available. Changes in exchange rates, which alter the prices of destinations, are certainly not planned by the tourism industry, but have a massive effect on visitor numbers, as the movements between the UK and the USA since 1978 have demonstrated. It is in the promotional field of images and perceptions that some of the most interesting changes occur, and these are marketing decisions. The classic recent example of planned image engineering may be found in the I Love New York campaign, which, based on extensive preliminary market research, created a significant improvement to the Big Apple39。 motivations include natural attractions, built attractions, cultural attractions and social attractions. Combined, these aspects of a destination prises what is generically, if loosely, known as its environment. The number of visitors the environment can acmodate in a typical range of activities on a typical busy day without damage to its elements and without undermining its attractiveness to visitors is known as its capacity. Destination facilities and services are elements within the destination, or linked to it, which make it possible for visitors to stay and in other ways enjoy and participate in the attractions. These include acmodation units, restaurants, transport at the destination, sports activities, retail outlets, and other facilities and services. Accessibility of the destination refers to the elements that affect the cost, speed and the convenience with which a traveler may reach a destination, including infrastructure, equipment, operational factors and government regulations. The attitudes and images customers have towards products strongly influence their buying decisions. Destination images are not necessarily grounded in experience or facts, but they are powerful motivators in travel and tourism. Images and the expectations of travel experiences are closely linked in prospective customers39。 view is a vertical dimension of specific service operations anized around the identified needs and wants of target segments of customers. Producers typically have regard for their interactions with other anizations on the horizontal dimensions, but their principal concern is with the vertical dimension of their own operations. From the standpoint of a potential customer considering any form of tourist visit, the product may be defined as a bundle or package of tangible and intangible ponents, based on activity at a destination. The package is perceived by the tourist as the experience available at a price, and may include destination attractions and environment, destination facilities and services, accessibility of the destination, images of the destination, and price to the customer. Destination attractions and environment that largely determine customers39。s operations in terms of the full sequence of contacts between customer and operator, from the time that they make initial inquiries, until they have used the product and left the premises. Even for a product such as that provided by a museum, there is ample scope to analyze all the stages of a visit and potential points of contact that occur from the moment the customer is in sight of the entrance until he leaves the building, say two hours later. Putting the ponents39。 and so on. For this reason, the overall product concept sets the context in which tourism marketing is conducted but it has only limited value in guiding the practical product design decisions that managers of individual producer anizations have to make. A ponents39。 airlines to 39。, for example, or 39。 selected to satisfy needs, is a vital requirement for marketing managers. It is central to this view that the ponents of the bundle may be designed, altered and fitted together in ways calculated to match identified customer needs. As far as the tourist is concerned, the product covers the plete experience from the time he leaves home to the time he returns to it. Thus the tourist product is to be considered as an amalgam of three main ponents of attractions, facilities at the destination, and accessibility of the destination. In other words, the tourist product is not an airline seat or a hotel bed, or relaxing on a sunny beach, but rather an amalgam of many ponents, or package. Airline seats and hotel beds, etc. are merely elements or ponents of a total tourist product which is a posite product. Without detracting in any way from the general validity and relevance of this overall view of tourism products, it has to be recognized that airlines, hotels, attractions, car rental and other producer anizations in the industry, generally take a much narrower view of the products they sell. They focus primarily on their own services. Many large hotel groups and transport operators employ product managers in their marketing teams and handle product formulation and development entirely in terms of the operations they control. Hotels refer to 39。 view, the conceptualization of travel and tourism products as a group of ponents or elements brought together in a 39。s management policies, including longterm growth strategy, investment, and personnel policy. They largely determine the corporate image an anization creates in the minds of its existing and prospective customers. To a great extent, the des